Hands-Free Travel Computing

WRITE A COMMENT

IMAGE:

Advertisement

Personal information managers are all the rage, but how do you use one of those tiny keyboards when you're driving? Jeffrey Epstein has found a better alternative: He relies instead on a miniature high-tech voice recorder. He's got all the other staples: cell phones, two-way pagers, and a palmtop. But his Voice Organizer 5500 (Voice Powered Technology, 800-255-2310) is at the top of his list.

"The recorder comes in handy for listening to directions as I'm driving to someone's house or office," he says. "I've had it for a while, and I'm still finding new ways to use it. It's like having a penless notepad wherever I go."

His Voice Organizer is palm-sized and shaped like a guitar pick. "I like to put it on my desk by my pager so that I look like a gadget guy," says Epstein, CEO of Boss Systems, a reseller of sales force automation products in Chicago.

The tiny gizmo comes with 512 KB of memory, and Epstein uses it to record messages, schedule appointments, and store up to 100 phone numbers. To activate most functions, Epstein just pushes a button and speaks into the microphone. To retrieve a phone number, for example, he manually selects the letter of the alphabet where he stored a number. Then he speaks the name, and instantly it appears with the number on the liquid crystal display.